Is study on sleep habits of fruit flies, mice a wake-up call?

The recent announcement of a multimillion-dollar federal grant to study the sleep habits of mice and fruit flies has Darold Treffert aroused.

Treffert, from Fond du Lac, responded to this news the way many people might, especially those of us who squeaked by in high school biology class. But he is a man of science, a longtime psychiatrist.

"Where is Bill Proxmire when we need him?" Treffert said in an email, referring to the former Wisconsin senator's Golden Fleece Award for the use of taxpayer dollars to study, for instance, why people fall in love or why prisoners want to get out of jail.

You can add Robin Vos, Wisconsin's Assembly speaker, to the skeptics club. The Republican is keeping his eyes on the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Last week, he said, "Of course I want research, but I want to have research done in a way that focuses on growing our economy, not on ancient mating habits of whatever."

The whatever tribe really knew how to get it on, I'm sure. But UW researchers didn't like Vos' crack, and they probably wouldn't be crazy about Treffert's playful musings on slumbering flies and mice either.

"It seems to me the mice in my garage never sleep, and I have never seen a dozing fruit fly," he said. "Since I can only rely on warfarin to rid the mice, my question is if I mix that with some Ambien, will they have more of a death with dignity?"

It's tempting to want our scientific research devoted to answering the most pressing questions of the moment. Like how can we keep Canadian air masses in Canada. Or how can we prevent the second floor of Milwaukee's sinking City Hall from becoming the ground floor.

But Chiara Cirelli assured me Thursday that the sleep research at UW-Madison on fruit flies and mice is money well spent and aimed ultimately at helping us sleep-challenged humans. She and Giulio Tononi, both highly regarded professors in the department of psychiatry, were awarded the grant — $1.6 million in the first year and a recommended total of $7.7 million over five years — by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

"We are trying to understand why we sleep, why we need to sleep," Cirelli said. "We have a lot of evidence already that the major mechanisms of the regulation of sleep are surprisingly similar in flies, in mice and in humans."

The fruit flies and mice are well fed and cared for, but they do have to put up with researchers waking them up constantly to study the effects of sleep deprivation. Fruit flies don't literally get shut-eye because they don't have eyelids. But their immobility and decreased response to their environment, as with any animal, is a telltale sign they're asleep.

It's easier, cheaper and more efficient to use flies and mice rather than people to study sleep science. "We are trying to use the strengths of each animal model to answer the overall question, which is why not sleeping is so bad for us," said Cirelli, who along with Tononi directs the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at UW's School of Medicine and Public Health.

The new study will examine tiredness and restoration at the cellular level, and will investigate the ability in some animals — perhaps even humans — to have part of the brain awake while the rest is asleep.

If fruit flies and mice see scientists coming, they might want to fly or run away. Studies involving their sleep habits are occurring at many universities around the country. The University of Pennsylvania, as one example, has figured out that caffeine keeps fruit flies up, and sleep deprivation makes them less interested in mating, which busy parents already could tell you.

Speaking of science involving animals, a Columbia University researcher just debunked the century-old claim that New York City's rat population matches its human census, now about 8.4 million. His calculations suggest it's only a fourth of that.

I can't speak for mice and fruit flies, but New Yorkers may sleep a little better tonight knowing they're surrounded by only 2 million rats.